Dom Parsons has won Britain’s first men’s skeleton medal in 70 years
A surprise victory has bestowed Team GB with its first medal of the Winter Olympics, after Dom Parsons won an 80mph rated bronze in the skeleton competition.
It’s been pretty bleak for the British team thus far in South Korea and Parsons’ podium will hopefully catalyse better results.
He clung on to his podium place by 0.11 of a second, winning Britain’s first men’s skeleton medal in 70 years in the process.
“I thought I had thrown it away with the mistakes I made,” Parsons, whose nickname is ‘the wizard’, said. “I couldn’t really believe it.
After finishing 10th in Sochi 2014, this was his second Olympics and a firm outsider – offered 100/1 odds of a win.
It is the result of the 30-year-old PhD student’s career, ranked 12th in the world before the games.
There was no chance of securing gold, which had been tied down since the first run of South Korean Yun Sungbin, but Parsons finished only two hundredths of a second behind Nikita Tregubov, of the Olympic Athletes from Russia, who took silver.
The medal was the first won by one of Team GB’s men in the skeleton since 1948. Our women have been far more successful with two golds and a silver since 2006.
Lizzy Yarnold and Laura Deas are expected to return from Pyeongchang with a few more around their necks too.
Parsons win will provide some relief to the largest British team ever sent to a Winter Games, who have endured a tough first week.
Snowboarder Katie Ormerod suffered a serious injury and Elise Christie crashed out of her 500m short-track speed skating final, reducing her to tears.
